Conventionally, water treatment systems are formed from a plurality of individual water treatment components that are fluidly and electrically coupled together for conditioning water to meet a particular requirement. For instance, a water treatment system is a term coined for a system capable of converting sea water to drinking water by use of various water treatment components. The term may also be used to define a system that converts water from a municipal water supply for use in rinsing semi-conductor chips, production of water for bottling or cola make-up, boiler water, or any other use of water that requires treatment to meet a particular requirement.
Water treatment components used to create water treatment systems vary due to the wide variety of water contaminants and the needs of the individual user. For instance, well water may have calcium carbonate hardness that is best treated by an ion-exchange resin, commonly referred to as a water softener. If iron is present, the type of iron whether it be soluble, bacterial, and/or organic bound, must be addressed to prevent fouling of the ion-exchange resin.
Turbidity and sediment found in surface water supplies require filtration, which may need to be pretreated with aeration and clarification that may further require coagulants. Excessively high levels of chlorine may require oxidation or removal by passage through an activated carbon bed.
Reverse Osmosis (RO) units have become a mainstay in water treatment systems as they are capable of removing over 95% of the dissolved solids in a raw water and be sized to provide throughputs as high as several million gallons of water a day. For this reason, pretreatment components are typically sized to protect the Reverse Osmosis membrane.
The Reverse Osmosis component further complicates the water treatment system by requiring pre-filters, booster and break tank pumps, ph and ORP monitors for regulating ph levels, bypass & auxiliary makeup valves, storage tanks, distribution pumps.
Integrated chip manufacturers demanding very high quality water require complex water treatment facilities such as Reverse Osmosis with waste and product flushing, followed by deionization systems having quality rinsing, filtration, recirculation, repressurization, holding tank holding tanks, such as portable exchange DI banks, high quality cells and so forth to the water treatment system.
As a result the complexity of water treatment systems continues to evolve wherein individual components that make up the system are directed to the particular water constituent that must be treated yet all such devices must work in conjunction for the water treatment system to operate properly. Conventionally, each water treatment component has a separate controller allowing the individual component unit to be placed in conjunction with a complimentary device sized for particular flow rate and designed to treat a particular water contaminant. For instance, a conventional water softener requires additional pump components such as timers, brine makers, chemical feeders, flow meters, totalizer meters, and control regeneration cycles. However, when a water softener is used in conjunction with a Reverse Osmosis unit, the Reverse Osmosis unit is designed to run at a fixed rate and cannot operate without the water softener, thus the water softener must be subservient to the Reverse Osmosis unit. The interconnection requires a trained technician to set the regeneration times, interface with the Reverse Osmosis unit to prevent operation during regeneration, programing of the softener clock to the totalizer, and so forth.
Similarly, a filtration system placed before the water softener may operate on a flow totalizer or pressure differentiation which also needs regeneration or what is known as, backwashing. The filtration system may require sanitization, include air input for scouring, chemical pumps for coagulants, chlorine or other chemical. The filtration system must be coordinated with the Reverse Osmosis unit to prevent backwash when the Reverse Osmosis is running, as well as coordinate with the water softener to prevent backwash while the softer is regenerating. To provide continuous flow, the filter and softeners may be duplexed but still must be coordinated to work together.
An activated carbon filter may be inline with the filtration unit and the softener unit, and again must be coordinated so that backwashing does not occur when the RO, softener, or filtration system is in a regeneration mode.
The result is an array of components that is chosen for the particular water supply yet individually customized as necessary for proper flow rates and contaminant removal, as the most efficient operational level. The installation of which becomes most difficult requiring trained technicians as the interface of the separate components must take place to prevent one component from operating while another is in regeneration or when storage tanks are full, or when quality drops, and so forth, a mistake of which can lead to catastrophic consequences.
Communication between water treatment components has traditionally been very time and labor intensive to coordinate. The initial setup of the water treatment system required a trained technician, and in many cases an electrician, to visit field installations for purposes of configuring the water treatment system. Due to individual water treatment component operation, high voltages wiring were commonly interfaced between individual water treatment components requiring local codes and regulations to be observed. Rework would be common if the voltage system did not conform to code and, in many cases, personnel that may otherwise be unfamiliar with water treatment system would need to be retained for purposes of the interconnecting. The associated expense of the circuit breaker panels in separate electrical lines further added to the expense of installation.
Prior art patents, such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,980 are directed to whole system monitoring of liquids by directing samples to one or more analytical instruments.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,863,822 discloses a parallel desalting method based on reverse osmosis, and the attempts at controlling pretreatment components.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,607,668 discloses a water purification system having a electrodeionization module which illustrates conventional art and the attempts at controlling pretreatment components.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,547,584 discloses a transportable water purification system employing a programmable logic controller. The logic controller operating individual components illustrating a redundancy of operating control and need to interface smart controllers with a logic controller.
Thus, what is lacking in the art is the ability to easily interface water treatment components into a water treatment system by use of a interfacing integrator to provide proper instructions and communication with the remaining components.